Poetry
Arrival of the Monsoon
Taufiq Rafat · 1985
Synopsis
Three decades of verse, written from 1947 to 1978 and collected in a volume for the first time: the monsoon and its rain that makes everything alive again, an old grandfather surrounded by his grandchildren in a three-generation house, a father's illness and death, the monotony of an office job. An English language bent to express the culture, nature and customs of Pakistan, what the author called a Pakistani idiom.
Context
The volume appeared in Lahore in 1985, with Vanguard Books; it was its author's first personal collection, in which he gathered the poems of three decades. Fatima Zubair, in The News, reads in it the whole country, its faith, its heritage and its landscapes, spoken in English, without a mere overlay of Urdu words; the Pakistan Press Foundation speaks of sensitive and subtle verse, in which a touch of madness sometimes passes.
Who it is for
In English; a few images of rural Punjab, its seasons and its large families help the reader into these poems.
Prizes and reception
The book that gave substance to what Pakistani criticism has since called the Pakistani idiom, according to The News.
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